As there are no chief executives of major corporations or other rich and powerful figures among my acquaintances, I've never been able to answer a question that is pertinent to this week's theme: do "fat cats" whinge about work as much as the rest of us? Or does a six-figure pay packet make a week chained to the desk seem a joyful prospect, even in high summer?

Pop offers no clues: its protagonists tend to be trapped in menial jobs that offer neither financial nor mental reward. And that's when they have jobs. Just as often they are starry-eyed dreamers or work-shy fops, who share with their creators a special instinct that the nine-to-five life is just not for them.

I'm sure many of us would join Sister Sledge in getting lost in music, if only we had the chance. But we all have bills to pay, so let's buckle down. London lad Marvin gets things going in bristling style, with an account of his stints working at a supermarket, in a theatre and, most heinous of all, as a traffic warden. Before he became the rapper Canibus, Germaine Williams worked in data analysis: his vivid descriptions of office life seethe with lived experience. Perhaps he should have listened to Show Business before choosing his alternative career: it makes performing in the hip-hop industry sound equally grim.

We've risen from our desks and the boss is frowning. Dolly Parton takes issue with this dread figure in her anthem for downtrodden secretaries, which doubles as a missive against capitalist hierarchies. The Dead Kennedys' sentiments were more obviously socialist: although the workers in At My Job chant "I'm so happy", it's in the mechanical voice of people who have had the life crushed out of them.

Reduced to cogs in a machine, what is there for workers to do but take revenge? Roy Orbison introduces us to a savvy lad who has won the heart of his boss's daughter: we can only hope that when he takes over the company, he's more sympathetic to its employees. June Tabor, meanwhile, sings softly of stocking-stitchers who augment their meagre pay packets by slipping nylons into their handbags on the sly.

The other alternative, of course, is not to get a job at all. Inspired by one of their roadies, Genesis wrote of a man who rejected offers to join a steady trade in favour of occasional self-employment mowing people's lawns. Although he makes a good show of scanning the situations vacant every morning, the narrator of Get a Job gives the distinct impression that finding a job is the last thing he wants to do.

So much for paid employment. What about the countless women who toil as housewives - work that is unpaid, often unappreciated and, frankly, tedious? Moe Tucker speaks for them all in the grumbling Lazy: "I don't wanna scrub, and why the hell would I clean the tub?" Why, indeed.

This week's playlist

1 I Hate My JobMarvin the Martian 2 Shove ThisJay-Oh-Bee Canibus 3 Show Business A Tribe Called Quest 4 9 to 5 Dolly Parton 5 At My Job Dead Kennedys 6 Working for the Man Roy Orbison 7 Mrs Rita June Tabor 8 I Know What I Like Genesis 9 Get a Job The Silhouettes 10 Lazy Moe Tucker